


Winter Flower

by MelancholyBrilliance



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, Alpha Ben Solo, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Author Is Up To No Good, Ben is 29 and Rey is 19, Ben is panicking, Breeding Kink, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Doctors & Physicians, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Light Angst, Medical Inaccuracies Galore, Moving In Together, No Pregnancy, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Older Man/Younger Woman, Omega Rey, POV Alternating, Pining, Poverty, Rey Needs A Hug, Sexual Tension, depiction of sickness and the like, just go with it, providing basic needs as a kink, seriously she's struggling (TM), throwing that in because i'm making up some stuff that i haven't seen before
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:07:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23665117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelancholyBrilliance/pseuds/MelancholyBrilliance
Summary: "That’s my number,” he informs her, pinning her with his gaze. “Do not leave this hospital until you call me, Omega.”The command comes from somewhere deep inside of him, a place that usually lies dormant despite barking orders to medical personnel every day. It has an immediate effect on Rey, whose pupils visibly widen as she stares at him, enraptured. She nods, and it’s clear that she’s not entirely in control of herself, and maybe Ben should feel guilty about how satisfying it all is, but he releases a pleased rumble from his chest instead.When Rey’s scent spikes in response, he practically runs out of the room, trembling all over.(A/B/O | Modern AU in which Rey is essentially a homeless youth, and Ben is a doctor who just wishes he didn’t have to feel so guilty about helping her.)
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 103
Kudos: 652





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> my very first A/B/O fic!!
> 
> chapter count is subject to change. i have a vague idea about where i'm going with this, but oftentimes writing an outline stresses me out and hinders the creative juices and i'm honestly just writing this story to have some fun so i'm not gonna do that
> 
> let the tropes and medical inaccuracies BEGIN

Things haven’t been going well for Rey Johnson.

One could probably argue that things haven’t been going well for Rey in all her nineteen years, but recently circumstances have been particularly grim.

Six days ago she received an eviction notice. The shitty apartment she lives in certainly isn’t anything to write home about, but it keeps her from being homeless—or it had, up to this point. Come tomorrow, she’s expected to move out.

Then there's the problem of having absolutely no money. Work has been appallingly slow ever since the new coffee shop opened up a block over; Rey’s hours have been cut and she can’t remember the last time she received a decent tip. Her second job as a housekeeper at a nursing home makes minimum wage, and whatever meager savings she had in her college fund have long since dried up.

To top it all off, she wakes up extraordinarily ill. It’s been creeping up on her for the past few days, a general feeling of malaise paired with a nasty cough, but she couldn’t very well give up her shifts to stay at home and feel sorry for herself.

Today, though, is so much worse than before. Her head pounds like someone is rhythmically taking a hammer to it, she’s simultaneously sweating and shivering, and she feels winded after only taking a few steps. Dizzy, too — enough to make her feel nauseous.

Unkar, her former foster parent, used to call her a runt for the way she got so sick, so often. The insult never truly bothered Rey— as an Omega she’s been called much worse— but currently it’s all she can think about as she vehemently curses her weak immune system. She literally can’t _afford_ to be sick.

Which is exactly why she’s choosing to ignore how she feels altogether and go to work. If she can scrape together enough tips today, she might be able to present her landlord with something that will convince him to let her live in her apartment a little bit longer.

She clocks into work five minutes early, making a quick pit stop in the bathroom to hide as she hacks her way through a coughing fit. When she comes out to the front counter, she feels impossibly worse than before.

“Rey.” Rose, her Beta co-worker, frowns at her in concern from where she stands in front of the refrigerator. “You look awful.”

Rey makes to sigh, but the inhale causes a sharp, throbbing pain to shoot through her chest, and—yeah. No dramatic sighing, then.

“Appreciate it, Rose,” she says wryly, scooping some coffee beans into the grinder.

“I’m serious,” Rose insists, walking over to take a closer look at Rey. She deepens her frown. “You’re pale as a ghost. And… sweaty.”

Rey shrugs a shoulder, averting her gaze from her co-worker’s serious brown eyes as the grinder buzzes away. “I feel fine.”

Rose fixes her with a knowing look of disapproval and crosses her arms over her dark orange apron. “You sure you’re not sick? Because it would be pretty irresponsible of you to come to work if you were.”

Rey bites back a snippy response— Rose has no idea about her current situation, nor is it her fault that she’s in it. It wouldn’t be fair to take it out on her.

“I’m fine,” Rey repeats, offering her the best smile she can muster. It feels tight on her cheeks. “Really.”

Rose regards her with narrowed eyes for another moment before sighing. “Fine,” she says, “but if you start to feel sick you better let Poe know.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rey mutters, transferring the freshly ground coffee beans into a filter as Rose goes to unlock the front door.

Customers trickle in sparsely that morning, as per usual. Rey is torn between panic and relief—she needs all the tips she can get, but as the minutes tick by, she feels progressively worse. 

Then the bell above the front door chimes, and he steps in.

She catches his scent immediately, carried over to her by the breeze that shoots in through the door, and her head snaps up to attention. A heady mix of velvety dark chocolate, blackcurrant, and leather bursts into the small coffee shop, electrifying Rey to her very core.

It’s delicious. Phenomenal.

_Alpha._

Rey moves up against the front counter without having given her body permission to do so, practically bent over it in an effort to get more of the tantalizing scent onto her tongue. Her mouth fills with saliva and the blood in her veins burns even hotter than before.

A lingering customer moves away from the counter and gives her a clear view of him then— the Alpha with the best scent she’s ever smelled in her entire _life_ — where he's stood still as a statue in front of the door. He’s clearly much older than her, with a headful of pitch black hair that matches his eyes, and he stands impossibly tall and broad in a white physician coat. 

He’s also staring back at her.

 _Smart,_ a voice inside Rey’s head whispers as they lock eyes and her heart speeds up. _Strong. Alpha will take good care of you._

Nostrils flaring, Rey takes another deep, hungry breath of his scent and presses herself tighter against the countertop. It hits her even harder than the first time, more concentrated now, and a flash of heat courses down her back and lights every nerve ending in her body on fire. 

The air feels thick suddenly, cloying and impossible to get into her lungs fast enough. She gasps around it, devolving into a coughing fit that rattles her down to her bones. Gripping the edge of the counter, she tries to steady herself, dizzy and disoriented and far, far too hot. Sweat gathers quickly on her skin and drips down the side of her temple.

“Rey?”

Rose’s voice sounds far-off. Rey feels faint, overwhelmed by the noise and smells around her, and the sharp pain that is stabbing through her chest. Her heart beats fast—much, much too fast.

Everything goes fuzzy.

“Rey!”

Cool, tiled floor presses up against her back, a welcome relief to the burning heat of her skin.

There’s racket around her—people shouting and the scuffle of shoes on the floor. Rey shuts her eyes against it all as the threads of consciousness slip through her fingers.

Just before she loses her grip, she feels the faint brush of fingers sweep along the skin above her scent gland, gently pressing in beside her windpipe. Even like this, Rey shudders at the sensation, and a strange calm washes over her like a drug entering her bloodstream. Through the fogginess in her head, she registers the comforting smell of blackcurrant and rich, dark cocoa.

 _Mine,_ she thinks, delirious, and promptly passes out.

~*~

Rey wakes up in an ambulance.

She’s vaguely aware that this is bad— she can’t afford an ambulance bill— but her bone-deep exhaustion crowds out most coherent thought. Someone— a paramedic, she thinks— puts a cannula around her face, inserting its' soft nubs into her nostrils. It makes breathing easier, thank God, and Rey shuts her eyes and tries to drown out the noises around her.

“Can you hear me?”

Rey stiffens and cracks open an eye to find a woman with dark brown hair studying her carefully. She smells like an Omega, which has Rey relaxing marginally against the stretcher she’s laying on.

“Mm,” she manages, swallowing down the itchy urge to cough.

“Can you tell me who you are?”

Right. She’s being tested. Gotta nail this.

“Rey Johnson,” she answers hoarsely.

“And where are you, Rey?”

Her eyes roll around the cramped interior of the ambulance. Another paramedic— a male Beta, based on the almost complete lack of scent— stands to her other side. 

“An ambulance.”

“Good. Can you tell me the day?”

Shit. It’s… Tuesday, maybe?

“Tuesday,” Rey says, less certain.

“Right. And do you know what happened?”

Not really. One second she was working, and the next she was ambushed by the best smell to ever pass through her airways.

Just the thought of the Alpha’s scent from before has her abruptly jerking against the stretcher’s restraints, an absurd panic shooting through her.

“Ma’am?” the paramedic says, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

“N-Nothing,” Rey stutters, forcing down her anxiety. It doesn’t make sense, anyway. “I, um. I think I fainted at work?”

And if the throbbing pain on the back of her head is anything to go by, she thinks she hit the floor pretty damn hard.

The paramedic nods, smiling. “Very good.”

Rey wouldn’t exactly call it very good, but she’s to say so. She closes her eyes instead and quickly drifts off, physically unable to keep them open for even a second longer. 

__

Not long after, she ends up in the ER at the nearby hospital where she meets Dr. Phasma, a towering blonde Alpha who proceeds to give her a thorough physical examination. When she presses her stethoscope to Rey’s chest and listens to her breathe, the stony line of her perfectly shaped lips turns almost imperceptibly down at the edges.

__

Rey answers all the doctor’s questions but trivializes the more alarming symptoms she’s been experiencing over the past few days. From the knowing, faintly reproachful look the Alpha gives her in return, Rey is pretty sure she doesn’t buy it.

__

“We’ll run some blood tests, and I want an X-ray of your chest done,” Dr. Phasma says firmly, scribbling into Rey’s chart with a little more force than strictly necessary—all very stereotypically Alpha-like.

__

Rey makes a distressed noise in the back of her throat. “I don’t—” The doctor looks up, cocking one finely groomed eyebrow at her in challenge, and Rey shrinks back in her bed despite herself. “I, um. I’m not sure I can afford any tests, unfortunately.”

__

Just saying the words is enough to bring a hot blush to her cheeks. It’s times like this that she wishes hadn’t been shipped out of England at eight years old to live here with her grandfather—she might not have had any family there, but at least she’d have universal healthcare. It's not like her grandfather had been around very long, anyway.

__

Dr. Phasma snaps the chart shut. “There are resources at the hospital that can help you with the billing,” she says brusquely. “You have a one-hundred and four degree fever, Ms. Johnson. That’s a dangerous temperature. I have to strongly advise against you leaving without treatment.”

__

Rey swallows nervously. “Dangerous?”

__

“Yes. The tests will narrow down what the problem is. I won’t do more than necessary, and I’ll make sure to have someone come in here to speak with you about those financial resources I mentioned.”

__

Dr. Phasma speaks in a tone that brooks no argument, and Rey can do little but nod in resignation, too tired and too sick to bother otherwise. Her life is already a raging dumpster fire—what’s a little more gasoline on the flames?

__

But then her test results come back. Pneumonia, something that shouldn't knock out a healthy nineteen-year-old Omega like it did her. Words like undernourished and hypokalemic and antibiotics are thrown around, Dr. Phasma informs her that she should be monitored overnight, and Rey is utterly defeated.

__

Her nurse comes in to check on her later, a young Beta woman named Tallie whose long, mousy brown locks swing behind her as she whirls around the room. She takes Rey’s temperature and happily announces that her fever has dropped a degree.

__

For the first time all day, Rey smiles. “Really? Does that mean I can go home?”

__

Tallie’s smile turns sympathetic. “You’ll have to see what the doctor thinks is best.”

__

She may as well have just said _Hell no,_ and it’s essentially the straw that breaks the camel’s back—Rey’s face crumples, and to her absolute horror, her eyes fill with tears.

__

“Oh, oh, don’t cry!” Tallie implores, widening her big blue eyes. “You’re improving—that’s something to be happy about!”

__

Rey presses the heels of her hands against her wet eyes and cries harder.

__

“You know,” the young nurse continues hurriedly, clearly trying to distract her. “One of our very own doctors was there when you fainted—Dr. Ben Solo. Lucky coincidence, huh?”

__

Rey freezes.

__

Her mind flashes back to the tall, dark-haired Alpha in the coffee shop and remembers that he had been wearing a white coat.

__

_Doctor_ Ben Solo.

__

Rey’s scent glands ache at just the thought of him, and she involuntarily reaches up to brush her hand over one.

“This doctor..." she says through her suddenly dry mouth, "You said he works here?”

__

“Yup! He's completing his surgical fellowship.”

__

Rey's heart stutters in her chest. 

__

He here's. He works here, in this hospital, where she’s currently staying.

__

_Alpha is here to help you,_ a voice purrs inside her head, all too satisfied.

__

“Whoa,” says Tallie, frowning at the bedside heart monitor. “Your heart rate just jumped way up. You okay?”

__

No. As usual, Rey Johnson is the furthest thing from okay.

__


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey thanks for reading!!

Ben is not going to look for her. That would be wildly inappropriate, unprofessional, and downright creepy.

But it’s difficult. He knows she’s currently in the same hospital. And he knows she’s sick, and needy, and he’s overwhelmed by this anxious, pressing instinct telling him that he needs to— _has to—_ help her. 

_Omega needs help._

Ben has to hold back a groan at the low, insistent voice that comes from that primitive part of his brain—the same voice that he hasn’t heard since he was a teenager and yet has been tormenting him ever since he smelled the pretty brunette Omega at the coffee shop this morning.

 _God,_ did she smell good. Ben tries valiantly not to dwell on it, to no avail; it had been intoxicating beyond anything he’d ever come across in his whole twenty-nine years on earth, even through the sour twang of her sickness. He had never felt so possessed to shove someone up against a wall, bury his nose into their neck, and _bite._ The barbaric urge had disgusted him after the paramedics took her away, especially since she had hardly looked a day over eighteen.

Rey, her name tag had said.

Not that he needs a name; it would be so easy to find her. He wouldn’t even have to violate HIPPA, technically. She’d be on the floor unit, as he has no doubt from the look and _smell_ of her that she’d need to be monitored, probably overnight. All Ben would have to do is make a quick trip to the seventh floor and walk down the halls, casually glancing into each room he passed. 

Even if the curtain was drawn, he would smell her. He would find her and go to her, and he would lick her glands until they smelled right, until they smelled like _him,_ and she would thank him for doing it—

“Oh my God,” Ben mutters, pulling his hair through his hands.

What the fuck is wrong with him?

“You good, Solo?”

Armitage Hux, the other surgeon in his fellowship program, fixes him with an arched eyebrow from across the physician’s lounge. “You’ve been off all morning.”

“I’m fine,” Ben bites out, realizing a beat too late that his snippiness would only serve to confirm Hux’s suspicions.

Hux rolls his eyes. “Right. Very believable.”

“Aren’t I always an insufferable asshole?” Ben replies, peevish. “You’ve said so yourself many times before.”

“And I stand by what I said.” The other man nods his head full of red hair, a mischievous smirk curling onto his sharp, pale face. “But this is different from your usual brand of unpleasantness. You’re distracted.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. You didn’t even ask your standard fifteen questions at the end of the conference today.”

“I found it thoroughly adequate.”

“You hardly spoke during rounds this morning either,” Hux continues as thought Ben hadn’t even spoken. “And you kept making weird groaning noises under your breath.”

Ben resists the urge to huff like a child and stands from his table. He’s agitated, mostly from knowing the Omega is in the building somewhere just above him, and partly because he knows Hux is right. Today has not been his best performance by any measure, and that’s not an easy thing for him to admit to himself.

“So what is it, then?” Hux prods far too delightedly as Ben stalks past him toward the exit. “What’s got golden boy Solo all worked up?”

It takes everything in him not to slam the door shut when he leaves.

~*~

As he rides the elevator up to the seventh floor, Ben tells himself that he’s only doing this so that he can focus on work again. That’s it. He’ll go, he’ll prove to himself that she’s okay, and then he’ll be on his way.

It’s just as easy as he suspected it would be to find her; the moment he turns the corner of the hallway on the floor unit, he’s assaulted by the same scent that nearly bowled him over in the coffee shop that morning—freshly baked pastries and caramelized pralines and maddeningly sweet vanilla.

Rational thought gets cast to the wayside the second it enters his nose and instinct takes over instead, leading him directly to her door.

The curtain is drawn so he can’t see inside, and everything within him screams to throw open the door and check on her. Be with her. 

_Take her._

“Fuck,” Ben whispers, mouth watering as he breathes her scent over his tongue. His hands tremble at his sides, and he curls them into fists so they don’t move to grab the door handle, nails biting into his palms.

It’s all for nothing, naturally, because the door swings open anyway and there she is.

Rey.

The sight of her is like a punch to the gut. She’s just as thin as Ben remembers, sharp clavicle protruding over the collar of her hospital gown as she stands on the other side of the room’s threshold.

Then her scent envelops him, ten times more potent without the door to block it, and Ben chokes on a low whine.

She stares at him, hazel eyes lidded and dark and glassy. _“Alpha,”_ she whispers, and takes a mindless forward.

Ben’s blood roars in his ears.

He isn’t sure how he manages to step back from her. It’s certainly not without Herculean effort—hearing her call him by designation in that breathy, sweet voice makes him want to snarl and spit and take her into his arms and hide her away for only himself.

But he doesn’t do that, thank God. Instead that same sick smell cuts through her natural scent like a knife, jarring enough that he snaps out of it and takes in the sweaty flush on her freckled face (fuck, _freckles_ ), and the IV bag that hangs precariously in her grip.

His instincts immediately go into a panicked frenzy.

“What are you doing?” he all but growls.

The sound of his voice seems to snap Rey out of her reverie, and she blinks once, twice, before her glassy eyes come back into focus. He can see the moment when what she’s just called him registers in her head.

A gasp slips from her mouth, and she brings a hand up to cover it. The movement sends a burst of her scent into Ben’s face, so strong that he has to repress a full-body shiver.

“I’m sorry!” she squeaks, eyes wide and mortified. “I—I don’t know why I said that!”

Ben isn’t bothered in the slightest that she referred to him by designation—if he’s being completely honest, he liked it far too much. No, he has a better reason to be irritated with her.

“What are you doing out of bed?” he snaps as he scans her slight frame for any signs of harm.

“You… I thought I…” Her mouth hangs agape, clearly at a loss for words.

 _She smelled you,_ a satisfied voice whispers in his head. _She smelled you and wanted to find you. Your Omega likes your scent._

Holy _shit,_ he’s starting to use possessive pronouns. 

His instinct to make sure she’s okay wars against the rational part of his brain that urges him to run far, far away from what can surely only end badly for him. She’s a _patient,_ for God’s sake. 

Much to his chagrin, instinct wins out. 

Ben holds his breath and crowds Rey back into the room, careful not to touch her. “You shouldn’t be up,” he says brusquely, shutting the door behind them and sweeping over to her bed. He watches her carefully as she shuffles back into the room in her yellow grippy socks, eyes never leaving his face. She looks nervous, and yet, oddly mystified. It’s more alluring than Ben cares to admit.

He clears his throat and motions to her bed. “Lie back down.”

Rey nods and does just that, keeping her eyes on him the whole time. 

It does something to Ben, her immediate obedience to his command paired with the full attention of her pretty eyes. Pleasure zips down his spine, a hot and alive thing that spreads like wildfire through his veins.

_Good Omega._

Ben recoils from her bed at the alarming thought. He tries to ignore the worried frown the action brings to Rey’s lips, along with the absurd pang he feels in his chest at having possibly upset her.

Ludicrous, all of it.

“You’re…” she begins, and Ben takes note of a faint British accent. “You’re Dr. Solo.”

It’s not a question. She knows who he is, just like he knows exactly who she is.

“I am,” Ben answers curtly, holding his hand out for her IV bag.

She hands it over with a swallow, that same hypnotized look in her eyes. “You were at my work when I fainted.”

Ben clenches his jaw and hangs the IV bag on its’ hook above her bed. He doesn’t like to think about seeing her that way. It deeply unsettles him for reasons he can’t even begin to parse out. “I was.”

“You helped me.”

“I merely ensured you were breathing until the ambulance arrived.”

“Still,” Rey insists quietly, and Ben is helpless to do anything but stare at her, strangely captivated by the soft tone she uses. “Thank you.” 

Her words warm him until he’s hot under the collar, which is objectively ridiculous; he’s thanked for performing actual life-saving procedures every day and never bats an eye.

”I’m Rey, by the way,” she says, offering him a small smile and tucking a lock of dark brown hair behind her ear.

”I know.” Ben has to resist wincing at the inherent creepiness of his blunt statement.

Thoroughly resigned to wallowing in self-loathing for the rest of the day, he releases a low breath and prepares to book it out of there; he came, he saw that she was fine, he suffered in the process—it’s time to go.

Before he can offer a short goodbye and leave, however, Rey speaks up again: “I do appreciate that you helped me, but—” She pauses to swallow, seemingly steeling herself. “I really do feel better, so I was thinking I could just go home now.”

Ben stares at her, dumbfounded.

Is this girl an idiot?

“Absolutely not,” he growls, anger roiling beneath his skin. “Are you insane? Do you understand how _sick_ you smell—”

He stops himself too late, grimacing at his blunder just as Rey’s eyes turn into sad saucers in her head.

“I smell… bad?”

The crushed dejection in her tone immediately makes Ben wants to kick his own ass. Bedside manners have admittedly never been his strong suit, but commenting on a patient’s _smell_ is a new low, even for him.

He looks around the room frantically as if it will somehow grant him any response that’s not _No, of course you don’t smell bad, you literally smell like the best fucking sex of my life and it’s been driving me up the wall all fucking day,_ when something else occurs to him.

“Where is your family?” he asks, frowning.

Rey’s wounded expression stiffens, and her posture takes on a vaguely defensive quality. “I don’t have any.”

Logically, Ben knows that he encounters patients without families all the time and he shouldn’t be upset. And yet, his heart still squeezes pitifully in his chest to hear this particular girl doesn’t have any.

“You don’t have a guardian?” he blurts, shoving his foot even deeper into his mouth.

Rey’s eyes harden. “No. I’m nineteen years old. I’m on my own.”

Ben is simultaneously relieved and horrified—relieved because he hasn’t been reduced to his baser animalistic instincts by a child, and horrified because there’s a fucking _decade_ age difference between them.

He licks his suddenly dry lips. “What about a friend you could call?”

Averting her eyes, Rey shrugs and fixes her gaze somewhere out the window. She suddenly looks frail in her big bed and oversized hospital gown. Impossibly small.

After a beat, it’s clear that she isn’t going to give him an answer to his question, as she remains stubbornly silent.

And then Ben hears a sniffle.

The sour scent of distressed Omega hits him next, potent, and the overpowering urgency to make it better quickens his pulse.

“Are you crying?” he asks, stunned, and—of course she’s crying. He knew that. Why would he ask that?

“I’m _upset,_ okay?!” Rey bursts out, turning toward him with wet, angry eyes. She scrubs her hand over her red face, and Ben has to resist reaching out and rubbing her scent gland to soothe her or something equally as stupid. “It’s just—all my friends went away to college. And I’m missing work right now, and I can’t afford this hospital bill, and I’m basically homeless—”

She abruptly clamps her mouth shut, watery eyes widening as if she’s repeated something truly unforgivable.

And maybe she would be correct, because Ben heard exactly what she said and now his ears are actually _ringing_ with anger.

“You’re what?”

Rey visibly swallows at his icy tone and shifts her eyes around nervously. “Nothing. Forget it.”

Ben ignores her, leaning in closer and flaring his nostrils. “Did you just say that you’re _homeless?”_

“I—” The red of her cheeks deepens. “I mean, I don’t have to be out of my apartment until tomorrow, so… technically not _yet._ ”

She smells anxious and sad and extraordinarily sick, and with the knowledge that she’s basically _homeless,_ Ben is literally seeing red. His fingers twitch at his sides with the ridiculous urge to throw something. Or punch someone. Anything irrationally violent that would definitely get him fired.

“No,” he hears himself say.

Rey frowns. “No?”

“No. You’re not going to be homeless.”

”I… what?”

He licks his lips, and Jesus, he can literally _taste_ her scent on them, he didn’t even know that was _possible._ It muddies his brain up even further, a frenzied swirl of anger and panic and arousal.

Distantly, he hears his pager beep on the waistband of his slacks.

“I’ll figure something out,” he affirms. “But you’re not leaving this hospital any time soon.”

Rey blinks a few times before huffing and crossing her arms across her chest. It’s definitely _not_ cute. 

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

Ben knows on some insane, fundamental level that she wants to listen to him. He could probably push her without much effort. It’s highly immoral, he knows that, but at the same time there’s a voice in his head screaming at him to protect her, to provide, and it feels like it’s the right thing to do — it feels like the absolute only thing that matters, actually, which is so asinine it makes him doubly angry. 

His pager beeps again. Growling, he rips it off his belt and glares down at the message.

High priority. He has to go.

The interruption distracts him enough to calm down a bit before he turns his attention back toward Rey. She’s watching him curiously, irises still blown out and cheeks flushed in a way that really shouldn’t be so attractive when Ben knows that she’s burning up with a fever.

He rubs his hand over his mouth once, weighing his options before deciding that there’s really only one.

“You’ll stay here until you’re discharged,” he says firmly. 

She widens her eyes, affronted. _“Excuse me?”_

Ben has to grit his teeth against another growl as he moves toward the door. “I mean it,” he says, turning back to point at her. “You will stay until you’re healthy. And you will not leave here without speaking to me first.”

Rey splutters in her bed. “I—You can’t—I don’t even—”

Ben takes out the notepad he keeps in his coat pocket that Hux makes fun of him for having and scribbles his cell number onto the first page. He rips it out and sets it on the table at the end of her bed.

“That’s my number,” he informs her, pinning her with his gaze. “Do not leave this hospital until you call me, Omega.”

The command comes from somewhere deep inside of him, a place that usually lies dormant despite barking orders to medical personnel every day. It has an immediate effect on Rey, whose pupils visibly widen as she stares at him, enraptured. She nods, and it’s clear that she’s not entirely in control of herself, and maybe Ben should feel guilty about how satisfying it all is, but he releases a pleased rumble from his chest instead.

When Rey’s scent spikes in response, he practically runs out of the room, trembling all over.

Stupid. So stupid, but he’s not thinking straight, head so full of a fucking nineteen-year-old girl’s scent that he’s apparently gone half-mad.

But the idea of her leaving here to go live on the streets or do whatever the fuck she thinks she’s going to do is almost enough to make Ben nauseous. He shouldn’t care—or he at least shouldn’t care this _much._ It’s absurd, but even letting her out of his sight just now seemed to disagree with the very fibers of his being.

Obviously they’re biologically compatible—but so what? She’s still way too young for him. Ben has always believed he was above being controlled by biology in this regard. How hard could it be to ignore instinct and take responsibility for your actions like an adult? He considers those who go on about the power of compatibility and scents to be ignorant and weak-minded.

Ben is better than that.

He’s just going to help her on her feet when she leaves the hospital and then he’ll leave her alone. Nothing more, nothing less—just the act of a Good Samaritan. And he’s absolutely not going to check on her again before he goes home tonight.

But as he steps onto the elevator with Rey’s scent still tingling at the back of his throat, Ben already knows that it’s a lie.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *dodges tomatoes*
> 
> yes hi so sorry for the wait

It occurs to Rey, after the cloudy haze of emotion and mindless lust clears, that she doesn’t _have_ to listen to Dr. Solo.

Why should she? Just because a man smells good doesn’t mean she owes him anything. Sure, she’s never smelled anyone necessarily better than him, but that’s neither here nor there. He’s a complete stranger, and a nice scent doesn’t change that.

But that doesn’t stop Rey from thinking.

All night, in and out of a feverish sleep, she thinks about Dr. Solo and his lowly spoken Alpha command.

_Do not leave this hospital until you call me, Omega._

And she wants to listen — badly. 

It irritates her how much she wants to listen to him and that criminally deep voice, how much she wants him to be pleased with her. 

How dare he use his Alpha voice on her, anyway? That behavior is completely inappropriate, especially when she doesn’t even _know_ him. It grates her that in the moment she had been more than happy to comply.

Never one to fall prey to her baser Omega instincts before now, Rey has to press her face into her pillow every time she remembers the way she had called Dr. Solo _Alpha_ to his face. It was as if someone else had taken over her body in that moment. Absolute insanity.

Rey groans over the beeping of monitors in her empty hospital room, mortified to the core. Why on earth she’s started thinking of the surly doctor as _her_ Alpha is beyond her. And _so_ embarrassing.

To a certain degree, it’s also frightening. She can’t afford to be so trusting, so ready to throw herself at the first man who smells better than usual to her. She can’t be _reliant_ — she learned the hard way in the foster care system that relying on people gets you nothing but disappointment. If she calls Dr. Solo and takes him up on... whatever it is he’s offering, it will no doubt come at a price. And it’s a price she’s not interested in paying.

Rey has goals. She wants to go to college — she _will_ go to college and won't let anything distract her from that. She has always been a survivor, and she’ll figure out how to solve this problem on her own just like every one before.

A plan begins to form in her mind. She’s going to get out of the hospital, get back to her apartment, and convince her landlord to let her stay a little longer until she can come get some money. And she won’t ask for help from any Alpha.

“Good morning, Rey!” Nurse Tallie comes in early the next day, grinning broadly. “I’m here to take your vitals and give you your meds.”

Rey sits up straighter in bed, clearing her throat. “Actually, I’d like to head home now.”

Tallie stops in her tracks, smile slipping off her face. “You want to leave the hospital?”

“I would,” she confirms, nodding. “I’m feeling much better today.”

It’s not exactly a lie. She still has a cough, but it feels much better than the day before. The fever must’ve gone down too, because she’s no longer sweaty and overheated.

Tallie frowns. “Would you be willing to talk to the doctor first? It’s really important that you’re safe to go home, Ms. Johnson.”

Rey resists the urge to huff. She shouldn’t have stayed the night in the first place, and she has no desire to add another day to her bill.

“No, thank you,” she answers firmly. “I’m good.”

It’s not nearly as easy as she thought it’d be. Despite Rey declining to speak to her, Dr. Phasma comes in to convince her to stay — though it feels much more like light intimidation than convincing. She explains the risks of leaving early, and that while Rey has made progress they would like to see her improve more, but Rey stands her ground.

Over an hour and many conversations later, Rey finally has the discharge papers in her hands. She signs off on them with flourish, breathing out a sigh of relief as she does. Already it feels as though a weight has been lifted from her shoulders.

She collects her clothes and changes in the her bathroom before leaving, shoving her cellphone into her jeans’ back pocket.

She pauses when she has the folded piece of paper with Dr. Solo’s number on it suspended over the garbage bin. Her chest tightens uncomfortably, and without thinking, she shoves the paper into her other pocket and turns to leave, ignoring the way her cheeks heat up and her pulse quickens.

She doesn’t let herself think about what it might mean.

Her purse is still at work, and without her wallet she has no bus card. With a short sigh, Rey heads out in the direction of the small coffee shop on foot. 

Despite her unfortunate circumstances, she feels something like a newly freed prisoner. She didn’t care for being in a hospital at all — there was no freedom or choice, just constant monitoring and being told what to do. Rey is in no hurry to go back.

By the time she makes it to Coffee Oasis, exhaustion is creeping in on her. She didn’t get nearly enough sleep the night before, and with her illness still lurking around in her body, it makes for a wildly unpleasant experience. Nonetheless, she gets her purse from inside and waves away the concern of her coworkers when they ask how she’s feeling. Rose’s concern, however, quickly morphs into a unimpressed frown when Rey asks for her tips from the day before.

Rey doesn’t let it bother her. They mean well, and she can’t expect them to understand.

With her bus card back in her possession, she gets on the next bus and promptly passes out the minute her butt hits the hard seat. She has a talent for waking up just before her stop, and sure enough, she stirs just at the bus stops not far from her apartment building.

It’s not a nice place by any means, but it’s home, and Rey has never felt as grateful to see it as in that moment. Though she wants nothing more than to collapse onto her bed, she heads over to her landlord’s apartment and knocks on the door.

Dave is a stout, balding man with a perpetually unimpressed expression. He opens the door and levels Rey with this look, one hand on the doorknob and the other loosely holding a bottle of beer.

“Johnson,” he says by way of greeting. “Did you get all your shit moved out?”

Rey winces. “Hey, Dave. Um, no, not yet. I was actually coming to ask if I could have a little more time to get you my rent. Things are kind of tight right now—”

“No can do,” Dave interrupts bluntly, shaking his head. “You’re over two months late on rent. I can’t keep giving you passes. This is how I make a living.”

“And I understand that,” Rey is quick to respond, panic ratcheting. “But just give me another week, and I swear I’ll get you the money—”

“I’m sorry kid, but no. This isn’t a charity.”

The burn of tears creeps in behind her eyes, and she clasps her hands in front of her. “Please,” she begs. “I just need a little more time.”

“I can’t help you,” Dave says firmly, pressing his lips in a thin line. “The place needs to be empty by tomorrow or you lose your deposit and get charged a cleaning fee. Good luck.”

He shuts the door then, leaving Rey to stand alone in the hallway, tears filling her eyes. She walks numbly up the few flights of stairs to her apartment, inserting the key and ignoring the eviction notice on the front of her door as she walks inside. The sparsely furnished studio is exactly as she left it, her half-full glass of water from the day before resting on the counter untouched.

She passes all of it in favor of falling back onto her bed, an old mattress lying directly on the floor in the corner. Staring up at the ceiling, she lets the day’s exhaustion overtake her, the tears in her eyes dripping down the sides of her face in salty rivers.

“Shit,” she says, well and truly defeated.

She’s out of options.

~*~

Except maybe she isn’t.

Lifting her bum, Rey reaches for the small slip of paper in her back pocket and sits up to unfold it. Dr. Solo’s scrawled handwriting stares back at her, ten digits in black ink. She whips out her cellphone and begins to enter in his phone number, tightly pressing the screen to her ear before she can change her mind.

It only rings once before his voice comes across the speaker, just as deep and arresting as she remembers.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Solo?” she sniffles, biting down on her lip to keep from crying in relief at the sound of his voice. She hates how comforting it is. “It’s me, Rey.”

A beat.

“Where the _fuck_ are you?” he growls, so sharp that Rey actually jumps where she sits. A fresh wave of tears fill her eyes at the clear displeasure in his tone, and she begins to sniffle in earnest. 

On top of having the shittiest day of her life, she’s also managed to piss off her Alpha.

“I’m sorry,” she warbles pitifully.

He carries on as if she hadn’t even spoken, voice hot with anger. “I told you to _call me,_ Omega. And then I find out you left AMA? Do you know how out of my mind I’ve been all day—”

He stops abruptly in his rant, and Rey only has a moment to wonder why when she realizes how hard she's crying, hand pressed over her mouth to muffle the noise. She doesn’t think she’s ever cried so much over the course of twenty-four hours in her entire life, and the thought only makes the tears come faster.

“Okay, okay,” comes Dr. Solo’s voice again, softer and somewhat panicked. “Hey, don’t cry—Rey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

His words calm her down slightly, lowering her sobs into sniveling. She reaches up to wipe at her cheek, hot and wet beneath her fingertips.

“Where are you?” he asks, tone carefully mild.

“I’m at my place,” Rey responds, sniffling. “But I have to be out by tomorrow.”

“Send me your address. I’m coming to get you.”

“Okay,” she whispers. “Thank you.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He hangs up then, and Rey promptly starts a new text message to send him her address. 

She has no idea what she’s doing — trusting a strange Alpha like this is something she would never normally do, but she’s sick and run-down and doesn’t want to fight anymore. All of her life, Rey has had to fight.

She’s so tired.

She lies back on her bed and shuts her eyes, hiccuping every now and then before drifting off into a light sleep.

The sound of knocking wakes her up some time later. Groggily, she pulls herself off her mattress and trudges to her front door. She can smell Dr. Solo before she even opens it, and the scents urges her to move faster, heart speeding up in anticipation.

Rey swings the door open with more force than necessary and then he’s there, a vision in a soft-looking white button-down and crisp black slacks. His hair looks messier than the day before but still impossibly shiny, and Rey wants nothing more than to rub her face in it and breathe in the scent of him like an animal. He looks cool and expensive and put-together — everything she’s not.

“Hi—” she begins, but is promptly cut off by a massive hand curling around her wrist and pulling her into him. 

She only has a half-second to shiver in pleasure at the way his thick fingers overlap where they hold her before she’s enveloped into wonderful warmth, a firm chest pressed to her cheek. She’s faintly aware that she’s crying again, silently wetting the cotton of his shirt. But for the first time all day, she cries out of relief. 

“No more tears,” Dr. Solo murmurs, chest rumbling beneath her cheek. His big, hot hand slides up from her back to cup the nape of her neck, deft fingers curling until they come to a rest over one of her scent glands. He squeezes it gently, and Rey goes utterly slack against him, all the tension in her body giving way to drowsy contentment.

“Mm,” she hums, nuzzling against his chest. She thinks she hears a satisfied rumble in return. 

With her hands fisted into the fabric at the back of his shirt, Rey molds herself to the hard contours of his body, breathing in deep. She can’t believe how large he is, or how safe she feels curled into his steady embrace. She wants to build a nest here and never leave. Why shouldn’t she? Alpha will provide for her — he’ll keep her safe. She doesn’t have to worry anymore.

Abruptly, Dr. Solo pulls away.

Rey whines softly at the loss, something she hasn’t done since she was a kid. The sound clearly surprises them both, and they stare at each other for a moment with wide eyes before Dr. Solo clears his throat and swiftly puts some space between them, jaw visibly clenched. A hot blush spreads from Rey’s ears down to her chest, and she ducks her head down to hide her face from him.

“Sorry,” she mumbles.

Dr. Solo doesn’t acknowledge her apology, flexing his hands into fists as he strides further into her apartment. Rey can’t help but feel self-conscious as his sharp eyes rove over her home, slightly embarrassed by the old, worn-down state of the place. She wants him to like it, for some reason — or at least think that she takes good care of it.

“Get some of your stuff together,” he tells her, voice tight. “Enough for a few days.”

Rey blinks at him. “What for?”

“You’ll stay at my place until we get this figured out. You’re still sick—I don’t know what you were thinking leaving the hospital.”

Some annoyance creeps back into her at his snippy comment, crowding out the groggy relaxation, and she crosses her arms over her chest. “I couldn’t afford to keep staying there, for your information. I had to worry about the fact that I was being evicted and all of my shit was going to get thrown out of here if I wasn’t back in time to stop it.”

It occurs to her then that she still _hasn’t_ stopped it technically, and if she frolics off into the sunset with some random Alpha tonight, all of her stuff will disappear and everything she suffered through today will have been for nothing. Not to mention the cleaning fee she’ll receive, which she certainly doesn’t need on top of everything else.

“I can’t go right now,” she blurts out, shaking her head. She glances around the room at her belongings as anxiety mounts in her chest, wringing her hands in front of her. “I have to get all of my stuff out of here or they’re going to get rid of it all and charge me.”

“Relax,” says Dr. Solo, and his voice cuts through her panic like a knife through butter, effortless. “I’ll take care of it. You’re not losing any of your things.”

Rey doesn’t have any real reason to trust him, and yet she does instinctively; she finds her shoulders relaxing immediately at his assurance, head nodding before she even realizes that she’s doing it.

Dr. Solo is closer than he was before, traces of concern on his serious face. Rey wants him to reach out and touch her scent gland like he had before, or just hold her for a little while again. She hasn’t been held very many times in her life.

Dr. Solo nods at her, as if he understands exactly what she’s thinking. He speaks calmly, slowly, so unlike how he’d acted during that first conversation in her hospital room. “Go get your things. I’m going to have a chat with your landlord about your stuff and then I’ll meet you downstairs by the door. Understand?”

Rey nods. A part of her wants to interject her own opinion, wants to demand he not order her around like a helpless child, but the Omega inside of her is absolutely _preening_ at his show of assertiveness, and ultimately she can’t be bothered.

_Your Alpha is so good to you. Now be good for your Alpha._

It must be the sickness, she reasons. And the exhaustion, and stress, and overall insanity of the day. She doesn’t want to think anymore. She just wants to listen, and let someone else do the thinking for once.

She can fit nearly half her clothes into the small duffle bag she has, along with her toothbrush, hair products, and suppressants. They had kept her on them at the hospital, thank God, so she hadn’t had to worry about it. She still won’t be pleased to be charged for something she already has, though.

Dr. Solo is waiting by the exit when she makes it downstairs, exactly where he said he’d be.

“Ready,” she says quietly once she reaches him, keeping her eyes trained on the ground.

She feels oddly shy all of a sudden, the events of the day catching up to her and making her feel small. She feels like she must’ve aged ten years since this morning.

They don’t speak as she follows him out to his car, a sleek, black Cadillac. His scent is pungent in the car, enough that Rey feels dizzy with it when she slides into the passenger seat as Dr. Solo holds the door open for her. It makes her fall into the seat, knees weak, and Dr. Solo frowns and leans down to place a hand over her forehead. Rey’s nerve endings sing under the attention, and his touch paired with the overwhelming scent of him sends liquid heat right between her legs.

She presses her thighs together and clenches around nothing, so empty, holding her breath to keep from letting out an embarrassing noise as his warm, smooth hand moves over her skin. To her horror, she feels the telltale wetness of slick drip out of her, pooling in her underwear. She squeezes her eyes shut in mortification and prays he doesn’t smell it.

“Your fever’s back,” he says, pulling his hand away. His nostrils flare as he looks down at her. “The medicine’s wearing off. I’ll give you a fever reducer when we get home.”

Rey can do nothing but nod as he shuts the door, holding her breath. She doesn’t know how she’s going to survive a whole car ride beside him.

Dr. Solo slides into the driver’s seat behind her, smoothly putting the car in drive and gripping the steering wheel tightly in those big hands of his — the same big hands that had so briefly held her.

What _was_ that? The entire exchange seemed driven more by instinct than anything else; Rey had felt possessed, her world narrowed down to the absolute rightness of being in his arms. Nothing else mattered outside of how good it felt, being that close to his strong body and rich voice.

Rey surreptitiously peeks at Dr. Solo from the side, admiring his sharp profile and the sure way he moves the wheel and adjusts the radio. His thick thighs strain against the fabric of his slacks, and the sight dries up her mouth in record time. She decides after that to keep her eyes trained on the road — it’s too risky to stare at him when she’s this close, flustered and drowning in his scent.

Already, the comfort of it all is lulling her into a sleepy state, eyelids drooping as she watches the sky change colors with the setting of the sun. She starts to get chills about halfway through the drive, but as if Dr. Solo can somehow read her mind, he wordlessly on her seat warmer.

Rey has a sneaking suspicion that she’s fucked. She doesn’t know him at all, and yet she doesn’t mind the idea of staying at his house in the slightest — in fact, a thread of excitement runs through her when she thinks about it. All her life, she’s avoided and mistrusted Alphas; she thought that they would do nothing but make her life more complicated. But now, here she is, eager to be in the presence of one and dripping _slick_ like a leaky faucet all the while. It’s humiliating. It’s exhilarating.

It’s definitely not an idea to entertain. 

Dr. Solo can’t possibly think of her as anything more than a kid; he looks so much older than her — he’s a _doctor,_ for God’s sake — and there’s no reason on earth he would want to be with a homeless nineteen year old girl who can’t seem to stop crying to save her life.

Fucking hell. She could kick herself for all the crying.

~*~

Dr. Solo’s house is just outside the city, and Rey can tell just by looking at it that it’s much nicer than any place she ever stayed growing up. Granted, that’s not exactly saying much.

They walk through his tidy garage to the back door, and Rey watches the defined muscles in his back shift beneath his shirt as he unlocks it. She wants to tuck herself in between the sharp wings of his shoulder blades, nuzzle in for the night there. She can’t tell if it’s her fever or just her needy Omega brain giving her such a weird urge — probably both.

Dr. Solo leads them into the house, flicking on lights as they go. The kitchen is spotless, with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. It looks like it belongs in an interior design magazine. Rey swallows.

“I have a guest room,” Dr. Solo begins without looking at her. “It’s down the hall to your left. I’ll put your stuff in there.”

“Okay,” Rey agrees, shamelessly staring at him as he moves around the kitchen, producing a glass of water and two white pills. She wants him to look at her like he had in the hospital room the day before, those brown eyes heated and penetrating, but he hasn’t even glanced in her direction since they got inside. It makes the glands on her wrists itch in irritation and neglect, hindbrain stirring with anxiety.

Shaking her head, she silently scolds her body for its ridiculous notion that this is her Alpha. She needs to relax. Be _cool._

“Take that,” he orders gruffly, tilting his head toward the pills before picking her duffel bag up from where he set it on the floor and walking past her without another word.

Rey obediently swallows down the medication, glancing back at the hallway he’d disappeared down. She walks further into the house when she’s finished, stopping at the edge of the living room. All the furniture looks expensive and markedly new, as if it doesn’t get much use. There is a tasteful white throw blanket draped across the back of his gray couch, and Rey’s fingers twitch with the desire to touch it. It looks soft and well-made. Comforting. Probably smells like him, too.

“Are you alright?”

Rey whips her head back to find Dr. Solo standing at the mouth of the hallway with a slight frown. She takes an involuntary step back, as if having been caught doing something she shouldn’t have.

“Just tired!” she squeaks.

If she was expecting sympathy, she’s sorely mistaken. Dr. Solo’s face grows even stormier than usual.

“Are you surprised?” he replies flatly. “You put your already weak body through hell today. You’re lucky you didn’t faint again.”

“I felt much better,” Rey argues, frowning right back at him.

“Yes, because the treatment was working. Imagine that.”

“I’m not going to apologize for leaving,” Rey snaps. If she weren’t so irritated, she might wonder at how rapidly she swings between infatuation and annoyance around him. “I already explained my situation to you.”

“But you’ve yet to explain why you didn’t just call me before you left!” Dr. Solo hisses back, teeth bared. “I could’ve helped you!”

Rey blinks. Of all the things she was expecting him to say, that hadn’t been it. 

Is that really why he’s so upset?

But then she remembers the Alpha command he’d used on her when he told her to call him, and she realizes that he’s probably just upset she’d managed to ignore it. Wounded Alpha pride makes much more sense as the source of his frustration than actual concern for her wellbeing.

“What, upset that your little Alpha command didn’t work?” Rey jeers. “You're not my Alpha—you had no right to use that on me.”

Even saying that he isn’t her Alpha feels wrong, and her Omega frets and prostrates herself, anxious to take it back.

Dr. Solo jerks back a bit, expression morphing into one of shock. 

“That’s not—no,” he stutters, the first time Rey has heard him as anything less than eloquent. He rolls his full lips and looks away from her, brow furrowed. “I shouldn’t have done that... I apologize.”

Again, it’s the last thing Rey expects to hear. She stares at him with wide eyes as all the fight in her dissipates, swiftly replaced by shock.

“It’s okay,” she says, stilted. She doesn’t think any Alpha has ever apologized to her as much as he has in the short time she’s known him. “Just... don’t do it again, please.”

Dr. Solo nods, eyes trained down. An awkward silence fills the air, and Rey shifts on her feet, pulling at the hem of her T-shirt.

“I put your stuff in your room,” he finally says. “My room is at the other end of the hall if you... need anything.”

Her Omega brain perks up at that verbiage, panting in excitement.

_He knows exactly what you need. Alpha is inviting you to his room, it would be bad not to go—_

“Right!” Rey squeaks. “I’ll just get to bed, then!”

He gives her a funny expression but nods, turning in the direction of what must be his room.

“Dr. Solo?” Rey speaks up, waiting until he looks back at her in question. “I just wanted to say thank you again. For helping me. I really appreciate it.”

He shakes his head, averting his eyes. “It’s not a problem. And—“ He clears his throat, jaw working, “Just—call me Ben.”

“Oh,” she says, blinking. “Right... Ben it is.” Her cheeks instantly warm up when his name leaves her mouth, and she knows her face must be pink all over.

Ben nods once, a quick jerk of his head, before turning and disappearing down the darkened hall for good.

Rey goes the other direction, glancing back at the end of the hallway where she can see his bedroom door, firmly shut.

_My room is at the other end of the hall if you need anything._

Rey shakes her head and admonishes herself. He obviously didn’t mean it _that_ way — he was just being nice. 

But the thought sticks with her as she changes into her pajamas, as she tiptoes to the bathroom and brushes her teeth, and as she slides between the sheets of his guest bed. 

The room smells like him, naturally, but not nearly as much as the rest of the house does. Rey pulls the covers up to her nose and breathes, mouth watering. A faint throb pulses between her legs.

She thinks about the throw blanket that was draped over the back of the couch. How soft it looked. How easy it would be to sneak out and grab it. How strongly it probably smells of Ben.

_Ben._

Squeaking, she pulls the covers up over her entire face, gone hot all over again. She can’t even _think_ his name without blushing.

She was right before — she is _so_ fucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there’s just no way this is only going to be ten chapter oops


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> strange happenings and... breeding kink? methinks so
> 
> on a serious note i want to say thank you for all the comments and kudos. very unexpected and very kind. so thank u!

Rey has been asleep for fourteen hours.

Ben can’t reason why that makes him so deeply pleased. She’s sick, he decides, and sleep is restorative. That’s all. The fact that she’s under his roof and so easily accessible has nothing to do with his satisfaction. That would be weird. She’s _nineteen._

He grits his teeth.

It’s nearly eleven in the morning, and he’s trying his hand at cooking to see if the smell entices her to wake up and eat. She should at least try. 

He purposely didn’t make anything fancy. Just oatmeal and eggs, foods that are easy on the stomach. It would be a shame if she couldn't keep it down — she already looks too thin. She needs nutrients and a full belly; Ben suspects that she occasionally goes without both.

He frowns, poking at the sizzling eggs in front of him with a spatula. Back at the hospital, Rey had said that she doesn’t have any family and that all of her friends were away at college.

That, he surmises, would mean she’s alone. Working a minimum wage job and living in that shithole apartment. Struggling to get by. Saving every penny, scrimping for food—

He slams the spatula onto the counter next to him. Just thinking about it makes his blood boil. Which in turn makes him even angrier — he shouldn’t care this much. She’s just a girl. Practically a child.

And yet she’s still in his house. Because he brought her here.

Ben groans in frustration, rubbing a hand over his face. The scrambled eggs brown, overcooked, but he hardly notices. Her smell is _everywhere._

He drops his hand with a scowl. “So what’s the plan, Solo?”

That’s the problem: _there is no fucking plan._ There’s not exactly a guidebook on caring for homeless youths, is there?

“Ben?”

He jerks, spinning around to find Rey standing at the mouth of the kitchen. She rubs a hand over one eye and Ben resists the urge to drag his gaze down her body, covered only by an overlarge T-shirt and tiny sleep shorts that display her long, tan legs.

Fuck. _Fuck._

“Sit down,” he manages, after swallowing down an indecent amount of saliva. He turns away from her and slides the eggs off the pan onto a plate, turning off the stove. “You need to get something in your stomach.”

 _“Ben,”_ she repeats, raspy and plaintive.

He freezes. The back of his neck prickles, and his stupid hindbrain _demands_ that he goes to her. 

Something is wrong. A flare of his nostrils and a tentative sniff of the air confirms it — anxious and needy.

“You’re still sick,” he says roughly, turning to face her again and focusing on the red flush across her cheeks. He feels restless, itchy all over. He wants to put his mouth to the side of her neck and lick. Maybe bite.

Yeah. Biting sounds good.

Rey nods like she can somehow hear his weird thoughts, hazel eyes bleary. Her mouth parts, clearly tasting the air, and she takes a step toward him.

Bad. Very bad. She’s got fucking freckles all over her nose, and she’s sick and homeless and alone, and Ben wants to fuck her senseless.

 _”Omega,”_ he growls. She freezes, sucking in a quick breath, and Ben valiantly ignores the fresh burst of anxiety that fills the air. “Either sit down and eat or go back to bed.”

Her shoulders curl inward. She blinks blankly at him a few times, slender fingers flexing at her sides. Something is very off— 

“Come with me?” she implores, voice small. She takes another mindless step forward, breathing with her mouth open. “Come to bed with me, Alpha.”

Oh, Jesus.

Ben shudders, pressing himself back against the counter. She’s advancing on him, swaying a bit under the influence of her fever, flushed and clammy and far too tempting for someone so sick.

_Omega wants you. Needs you. It would be wrong to deny her, to leave her desperate and aching without your—_

“No,” he chokes out, holding up a hand between them. Rey stops immediately in her tracks, eyes huge and glassy. “No, Rey.”

Her face crumples. It’s the saddest thing he’s ever seen, which only serves to make him even _more_ agitated because he's the cause of it.

Ben sucks in a shaky breath to steady himself, and his eyelids flutter by their own volition when her scent hits the back of his throat as a result. It's explosively sweet, warming him all the way down to his toes.

She’s perfect. He shouldn’t be denying such a perfect Omega.

Rey whimpers, which does nothing to help the conflicted thoughts swirling around his head. Her eyes shine, and a bead of sweat drips slowly down her temple. Ben squeezes the countertop behind him and wills himself not to get hard.

 _She’s sick,_ he reminds himself. _She’s_ sick, _you weird fuck. Enough already._

Rey takes one more small step toward him, expression beseeching. “Alpha,” she whispers.

And then she promptly drops to the floor.

Ben makes a distressed sound deep in his chest, lurching forward — but he stops when he realizes that she had _meant_ to go down. She’s on her knees, head bowed so her dark hair falls forward in a curtain around her face, conveniently revealing the swollen mating gland that peeks out over the gaping collar of her T-shirt. Just the top of it is visible, angry and red. The roots of Ben's teeth throb at the sight.

Rey looks up at him through her long lashes, the perfect picture of submission. “Please,” she whimpers.

Ben's mouth goes abruptly dry.

Distantly, the doctor portion of brain scrambles to figure out what’s going on: she’s sick and a little delirious. They’re biologically compatible, and she slept in his house. She’s young. Clearly sensitive. Probably can’t afford great suppressants. His scent is everywhere; paired with the fever, it must be an overwhelming combination.

But that still doesn’t really explain it. Not fully. It certainly doesn’t explain why her mating gland looks the way it does, which is fucking _ripe._ It’s almost like she’s in heat, but that’s impossible; Ben can smell the the faint metallic of her suppressants overlaying her scent even now.

He should give her meds or something. _He should take her back to the fucking hospital._

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the Alpha part of his brain is much louder than the rational bit at the moment. And this part tells him that he has to give his Omega what she needs, now. He has to. Has to, has to, has to—

Growling, he crosses the kitchen in three long strides. Rey lets out an alluring little moan when he scoops her into his arms, fingers threading through her hair at the back of her head so he can push her face into his neck. She moans again, nuzzling closer, nose pressed right up against his gland. Ben’s eyes roll back.

Rey chirps in satisfaction and his knees go weak at the sound. “You want me?” she asks, high-pitched. “I please you?”

“Yes,” Ben groans, before he can’t think better of it. He pushes his nose into her hair and inhales deeply. “I’m so pleased, Omega.”

The words rumble like a purr and make her shiver in his arms, pure joy rippling through her scent. 

Good. She’s happy. He _should_ be the one making her happy.

Swiftly, Ben carries her down the hall and back to her bedroom — and immediately comes to a dead stop in the doorway the moment he sees the state of her room.

During the night, it appears that Rey had arranged the pillows and covers on the bed into a meticulous, circular arrangement.

A nest. It’s a nest.

Ben whines long and low, skin tightening. He's never actually seen one in person before. Omegas are generally only comfortable showing their nests to Alphas they trust deeply, which usually means their mate.

But Rey seems perfectly happy to have him there. She continues chirping and nosing at his gland, so tiny in his arms, her scent blooming tenfold in intensity.

Ben’s never been harder in his life.

“Do you like it?” she asks, breathless and small. Nervous.

Judging by his raging hard-on, yeah, he fucking likes it.

He can’t look away; his eyes zero in on the details of the nest, predatory, and he licks his lips. He's never given them much thought before, but now that's he's face to face with one — with _Rey's_ — he feels dizzy with lust.

It’s perfect. Perfect for mating. Perfect for her to lay in while her belly swells with his pup.

Ben’s breathing comes faster. He’s going to take such good care of her. Of both of them.

“It’s beautiful,” he tells her, kissing the crown of her head. She immediately explodes into pleased chirps and bleats, rubbing herself restlessly against his front. “You did such a wonderful job.”

Rey pants, clawing at his shirt, nails scraping his chest. Ben shivers — he likes that. He'd like her to mark him, he thinks, especially when he’s fucking her. 

And he is going to fuck her. Wants her to dig her nails into his back and howl when he does, so that anybody who sees the marks will know that he’s had her.

“Sweet Omega,” he purrs, brushing his lips over her damp forehead. “Such a sweet little thing for me, aren't you?”

She nods fast, whining, eyes clamping shut as though she’s in pain. Ben clucks his tongue, walking them over to the bed. He stretches out the thumb on the hand that holds her shoulder until it touches the puffy scent gland on her neck and presses down. Rey slumps against him, her desperate whines tapering off into hitched whimpers.

“I know,” he soothes. His voice doesn’t sound like his own, so low and gentle. Ben doesn’t _speak_ like this. “I’m going to fix it. And you’re going to let me, hm?”

Rey’s eyes flutter as he lowers her into her nest, hands still fisted into his T-shirt. She nods again, a faint smile quirking at the corner of her pretty pink mouth, eyes wet and unfocused as they stare up at him.

She’s perfection. All flushed and warm and soft. Pliant and ready for him.

Nostrils flaring, he drops a knee into her nest and leans over her, balancing his hands on either side of her head. Rey immediately arches up toward him, hiccuping, knuckles white around the fabric of his shirt.

“Please,” she gasps. A tear drips down her temple.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” Ben coos, taking both her hands in just one of his and gently pulling them away from his shirt. He brings them up over her head and pins them there before burying his face into the crook of her neck. “I’ve got you,” he mumbles against her scent gland, lips tingling where they brush the hot skin. 

Rey moans loud and long at the contact, hips bucking up into empty air. Face tucked under her jaw, Ben inhales with his mouth open, dragging her scent directly over his tongue.

Holy _shit._ She tastes fucking phenomenal here. Ben hadn't thought it could get any better, but this is unreal; stupefying in its potency, like heroin injected straight into the vein. He's entirely unaware of how loudly he’s groaning, squeezing her wrists and pushing his lips even harder into her skin, desperate for more.

“M’gonna take such good care of you,” he slurs, mouth steadily filling with spit. It smears all over her gland as he mouths at it, which is… good. Very good. “Just needa little taste first, ‘kay?”

Rey whimpers and immediately strains her neck back to give him better access; his Alpha brain beats its chest in pleasure at the ready show of submission.

Shaking ever so slightly, Ben drags the flat of his tongue across her scorching gland, the direct source of those intoxicating pheromones — and very nearly passes out.

His eyes rolls back into his head as the taste of her explodes onto his tongue. It’s rich and sweet and tinged with some heady combination of lust and desperation. He hardly pays the lingering bitterness of her illness any mind, not when his cock jumps so hard against the zipper of his jeans that it’s almost painful.

He doesn’t know when he moves, but suddenly Ben finds himself completely inside of the nest, hovering over her trembling body, hands fisted into the sheets as he licks relentlessly at her neck. He feels possessed. Blood roars in his ears, along with some faint, tinny ringing sound.

 _Mine,_ he thinks feverishly, scraping his teeth against the puffy skin. Rey jerks up underneath him, and they both moan when their hips meet. _Mine, mine, mine. Gotta bite. Gotta_ bite.

So absorbed is Ben with mixing their scents together, licking and nipping the gland until it smells just right, that he hardly notices Rey’s begging until she begins to pull roughly at his hair. He lifts his head in a daze to find her big, teary eyes staring back at him, lower lip wobbling.

“Please,” she croaks thickly. She’s flushed all the way down to her collarbone. “Please, Alpha. Need—need you to—” 

She hiccups and weakly tugs at his hair again, more frustrated tears leaking from her eyes. 

Ben can only stare for a moment, hypnotized by how pretty she is like this, sweating and pink all over as she pleads for him — too shy to ask for his cock outright, but too desperate not to say anything at all.

Such a sweet, lovely mate he has.

He slips his palm up the side of her huge T-shirt, and Rey hisses through her teeth, arching sharply into the touch. Her skin is so hot and soft, and when he passes his hand over the ladder of her ribcage he discovers that she’s not wearing a bra.

“Please, please," she begs, voice cracking. "Please, I want—need you to take care of me. I’m—I’m good.” A little cry bubbles out of her lips and she squeezes her eyes shut, fat tears collecting in her lashes. “I’m good,” she whispers.

Ben blinks down at her once, her words settling deep into some unfamiliar part of his brain and lighting up all of his nerve endings — and then a laser-like focus is washing over him, inescapable. His muscles go perfectly still.

_Provide for what’s yours._

“Yes,” he finally rasps, smoothly sliding his hand under her scorching back. “You’re very good. I’m sorry I made you wait, Omega. I’m going to give you what you need.”

She keens, at his words or his touch, he isn't sure. Her eyes are big staring up at him, hopeful and entirely trusting.

“Turn over,” Ben orders.

Rey moves so quickly her cheek bounces off the mattress when she settles onto her stomach. He grasps the hem of her shirt and pushes it up until her inflamed mating gland is revealed in its entirety, bright red and distended between the tops of her freckled shoulder blades.

It’s obscene. Ben’s mouth fills with saliva yet again, jaw aching.

Mesmerized, he runs his fingers over the angry red splotches that leach away from the gland and into the smooth, tan expanse of her back. Almost like an allergic reaction.

He’s never seen that before. Such an odd sight nearly gives him pause, but then Rey bleats a few times, fingers curling tightly into the bedsheet, and his attention is pulled back to his focused ministrations.

He lets his fingers wander to her ribs again. They’re overly prominent, jutting out beneath her skin.

Ben frowns. Not right. She’s much, much too thin. Makes discomfort niggle at his sternum.

“Gonna give you lots of food,” he decides in a murmur, lowering his lips to the small of her back. “Make you nice and healthy.”

A shiver wracks through him at his words, and Rey shudders in tandem, little chirps burbling out between her soft cries. He feels near delirious with pleasure, and he’s not even being stimulated — it’s entirely due to what he’s just said.

Vaguely, it registers that he could probably come like this. Just from saying these things.

He doesn’t have the wherewithal to wonder at the absurdity of that. Instead, Ben slowly drags his tongue up the divot of her spine. Rey all but wails, burying her mottled, tear-streaked face into the mattress.

“Already gave you a place to sleep.” He holds his lips to her burning skin, scalp buzzing. “Gave you such a nice place to build your pretty nest, didn’t I?”

Rey sniffles and nods, hips undulating against the bed. “Mhm.”

“Don’t I provide for you, Omega?”

“Yes,” she whimpers, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip when his mouth climbs higher, inching toward her gland. “Yes, Alpha, please—please do it—”

“I give you whatever you need,” Ben mumbles, vision darkening at the edges as his eyes lock onto the raised, red patch beneath her nape. Her skin gets hotter under his mouth the closer he gets. “Provide for you. Take care of you. Keep you happy and safe.”

As soon as the word “safe” leaves his mouth, Rey releases an animal-like moan, abruptly twisting her body below him.

But Ben is ready, like he'd anticipated the reaction; without missing a beat, he clamps his forearm over the small of her back, holding her in place. 

“Oh, god, please,” Rey begs, openly sobbing. She arches her back toward him. “Please do it—bite me, bite me, bite me—”

Ben groans, nodding, dragging his mouth up. His head swims, cock weeping precome inside his jeans. The ringing is back in his ears, but it's different this time — two separate tones, one after the other.

Kinda sounds like—

A doorbell.

Ben freezes, listening intently. Someone is at the front door. The back of his neck prickles in agitation, not at all happy with anyone else being so close to his mate like this. Not before he’s bitten her.

“Alpha?” Rey warbles, hastily twisting an arm back to grab at his hip. The touch distracts him momentarily, but then the doorbell rings again and he’s growling, off the bed in a flash.

“No, no,” she babbles, turning over and reaching for him. “Wait—”

Ben is already stalking out of the room. He shuts the bedroom door behind him firmly, cursing the lack of a lock. Stupid. Should have a lock on his mate’s room so only he can get in.

He stomps over to the front door, jaw tight and hot all over. Whoever it is, he’s going to fucking kill them.

Teeth bared, Ben swings the door open, a growl already ripping through his chest in preparation.

He's met with the sight of his empty street.

Confused, Ben glances down to see an unassuming package on his porch. He stands there, blinking, stupidly trying to fit the pieces together.

The cool autumn air in his lungs begins to clear his head and a modicum of coherency returns. It appears that whoever had rung his doorbell had just been leaving the package. No challenger to tackle and kill, then.

Fingers shaking a bit, Ben bends down and picks up the package, stiffly moving back inside the house. Must be the exercise bands he ordered last week.

He sets the small box on the kitchen table and stares at it. The longer he looks, the more his heartbeat quickens, a hot sweat breaking out over his forehead.

He had almost fucking _bit_ her. And now he has to come to terms with the fact that he’d only stopped because of a pair of fucking exercise bands.

Ben puts a hand over his mouth, trembling as the gravity of what he’d nearly done settles upon him.

What the fuck. _What the fuck._

Spinning on his heel, he grabs a glass from one of the kitchen cabinets and pours himself some water from his Brita, guzzling it all down in one go. He can still taste Rey on his tongue when he’s finished.

Ben sets the glass down and grits his teeth, squeezing his hands into tight fists. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he hisses.

He had almost just mated a nineteen year old girl he barely knows. He had _wanted_ to.

“Jesus Christ,” Ben mutters, slumping against the countertop and covering his face with his hands.

There’s still a part of him that’s desperate to go back to her, and he pushes that part down as far as it can go. Not fucking happening. He shudders just to think of a repeat performance. _None_ of that had been normal. Especially not the way her mating gland had looked, surrounded by those red splotches.

So what the fuck had just happened? A fever can’t be blamed for that behavior. She isn’t having a breakthrough heat, either; he’s sure of that for several reasons. Even through his temporary madness, the smell of her suppressants had been noticeable. Greatly diminished, yes, but still present. And then there was the very distinct lack of slick. If Rey had been in the thick of heat with an Alpha tonguing her up and down, she should’ve been drenched in it, along with the mattress. Ben hadn’t noticed any.

No, he’d been too busy almost coming in his pants from promising her innocuous things like food and safety. 

Ben groans, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. That had _definitely_ not been normal — he’s seen an Omega or two through heat, and he’s never behaved that way before. Like he’d been fucking drugged, slurring his words, ready to mate her when he _hadn’t even been fucking her._

A shaky breath exits his lungs. This went beyond biological compatibility. The entire situation had suddenly become a very, very dangerous one — one he’s no longer in control of.

Licking his dry lips, Ben fumbles clumsily for his cellphone in his back pocket and opens up the contact list. He needs to figure out what’s going on but he’s too panicked to think straight. 

Maybe that’s why he calls who he calls.

The phone rings once, twice—

“…Hello?”

“Yeah, hi.” Ben grimaces, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I need your help.”


	5. Chapter 5

Rey wakes up to the wrong scent.

The hair at the back of her nape stands on end and she rears up, abruptly alert.

A small, older woman sits in a chair at the side of her bed, smiling warmly. “Good morning,” she begins, clasping her hands in her lap. She cocks her head thoughtfully. “Or I guess I should be saying good evening, huh?”

Rey’s heart picks up and she glances around the room quickly, muscles coiled tight. Everything is in place except for the chair that the woman sits in; before, it had been in the far corner of the room.

Anxiety curls sickly and tight around her chest, curling up her throat. She knows that tears are not far behind. A stranger is near her nest. The nest that she spent all night building, the one her Alpha loved, the one he scented her in—

“Where’s Ben?” she blurts, high-pitched and panicked.

The woman’s expression which had been open and friendly thus far flickers with something like trepidation. But it’s gone in a flash, replaced by smile lines and bright, black-brown eyes. “He had to go to work, dear,” she says, reaching out as though to touch Rey’s wrist. Rey jerks her hand back immediately, only noticing the IV attached to the back of it as she does.

“What—” She stares down at the tube, following it up to the IV stand beside her bed. Now tears do fill her eyes. “What is this?”

The strange scent blooms stronger.

“Oh, don’t cry, honey—”

 _“Don’t,”_ Rey all but snarls, whipping her head around to fix the strange woman with a deadly glare.

The woman stops short from where she had stood up from the chair in an aborted motion toward Rey. She raises her small, wrinkled hands in a sign of surrender. “Forgive me. I’ll keep away from your nest.”

Just hearing this strange lady say the word “nest” is too much for Rey — too intimate and humiliating. The tears pour over and she all but dissolves into her hands, trembling.

“I want—” She shudders on an inhale. “I want _Ben.”_

“He’ll be back soon, honey.”

She whimpers, pitiful and wet. Crying again — Rey never cried, and now it seems like that’s all she does.

“I’m his mom, by the way.” This gets Rey’s attention, and she snaps her head up in surprise, tears momentarily forgotten. The woman smiles again. “My name’s Leia. Ben asked me to stay with you while he went to work.”

“He did?”

“Mhm. You’re in pretty bad shape, aren’t you?”

Rey stiffens. “I’m fine.”

“Is that so?” Leia raises an eyebrow, sitting back down in her chair and crossing her legs. “So you always behave this way out of heat?”

A blush explodes onto Rey’s cheeks, and she widens her eyes, mortified. “I-I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“You’re a stubborn little thing, aren’t you?” Amusement colors Leia's words.

Rey doesn’t answer, crossing her arms over her chest and resolutely staring down at the comforter. She feels exposed to her core, Ben’s mother or not. She hates this, but her instincts to stay close to her nest win out over the desire to escape.

“I’m sorry, dear, I’m not trying to tease you,” Leia amends, sounding genuinely contrite. “Honestly. I’m a physician, too, if that makes you feel any better.” Rey looks up in surprise to find her smiling again, a touch mischievous. “Retired now, but I still keep up on the literature.”

“Is Ben’s dad a doctor, too?” she asks despite herself, curiosity piquing.

Leia barks a loud laugh at that. “Oh god, no. But that’s a whole other story.” She slowly stands from her chair again and Rey tenses. “Do you mind if I have a look at your back, Rey? Ben told me you were having some sort of reaction.”

Rey’s skin flashes hotly at the idea of someone outside of Ben touching her, and she shakes her head rapidly. “No, don’t—don’t touch me.”

Leia stops immediately. “Okay. I won’t touch you. Would you be willing to just lift your shift up for me, then? It’ll only take a few seconds.”

She chews her lip, debating. Usually it wouldn’t bother her to show a doctor her back, mating gland or not, but right now the thought of showing it to anyone but Ben makes her want to crawl out of her own skin.

Distantly, she is aware that this isn’t normal, though she’s too afraid to admit it. Whatever is happening to her body is frightening and out of her control. She’d asked Ben to _mate_ her this morning, for God’s sake—

“Rey? Are you alright?” Leia’s voice abruptly pulls her from her panicked thoughts. “You’ve gone all red.”

“I’m fine!” she squeaks. 

Without giving herself enough time to think about it any further, she turns her back toward Leia and grabs the hem of her t-shirt. The longer she’s been awake, the more her head has started to clear — much different from when she’d woken up this morning. Then, she had felt shrouded in need, delirious and hot and aching all over. Aching for something that only Ben could give her.

She blushes again at her salacious line of thought, scolding herself. His _mother_ is here.

Grateful for an excuse to keep her hot face turned away, Rey slowly pulls up the bottom of her shirt. She lifts it above her neck in the back with one hand while holding the front side close to her chest with the other.

“Go ahead,” she says quietly.

Behind her, Leia draws closer, bringing her strange scent along; Rey recognizes once the older woman is close enough that it’s the muted scent of a mated Alpha, suppressed even further by blockers. She blinks, muscles involuntarily relaxing as this information registers in her hindbrain.

“Hm,” Leia hums behind her, pensive.

Rey cranes her neck, straining to see down her back. “What is it?”

“It looks similar to an allergic reaction, only more… intense.”

“Intense?” Rey echoes, voice small.

“Do you have any allergies?”

She shakes her head, letting her shirt fall back down. “None that I know of.”

“How about itching or burning? Any of that on you back?”

Rey turns back around, frowning. “Not really. I guess the skin feels hotter than usual, but it’s not painful. Really it’s more of a…” She trails off hesitantly, averting her eyes. “An ache, I guess.”

“An ache?” Leia repeats, brow furrowed. “All over your skin?”

Rey squeezes her eyes shut, embarrassment flooding through her. “No, just—it’s just my—”

She can’t say it. Thankfully, Leia seems to intuit her meaning all the same, nodding her head. “Ah, I understand.” She presses her lips together, brow drawn. “Well, if it involves the mating gland, then it’s probably hormone related.”

Opening her eyes, Rey lets out a small huff of exasperation. If she’d understood, why did she _say the word anyway?_

Leia, for her part, appears entirely unperturbed, absently tapping her fingers against her lips. 

“You don’t know what it is?” Rey asks nervously.

“I don’t,” she admits. “I was an OBGYN. I saw a lot of Omegas through childbirth, naturally, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen this before.” Rey’s face must showcase her fear, because Leia hurries to add, “But don’t work yourself up, dear. I don’t know it all, and there’s specialists who can look at it. They’ll know more than I do.”

“I can’t afford specialists,” Rey says, slightly panicked. Her eyes burn threateningly, but she refuses to cry again.

Leia makes a maternal tutting sound. “No need to worry about all that right now. You’re sick and need rest. Lie back down and I’ll go make you some soup, alright?”

Rey attempts to inconspicuously wipe her drippy nose on her shoulder. “All I’ve done all day is rest,” she mutters petulantly. She lies back down on the bed anyway and shuts her eyes, more out of fatigue than actual tiredness.

“Good. Sleep helps you heal. You were pretty dehydrated before I stuck that IV in you.”

“Well, that’s probably because I was too busy sleeping all day to drink any water.”

Leia snorts, and when Rey peeks out of one eye she finds the older woman smirking down at her. “I was right about stubborn, huh?” she says, shaking her head and heading for the door. 

Before she can leave the room, Rey speaks up again. “Leia?” The older woman stops, glancing back at her in question. Rey bites her lip with a blush. “When exactly will Ben be back?”

A smile twitches at the corner of Leia’s mouth, though she makes a valiant effort to hide it. “He told me ten. Just a few more hours.”

Rey nods, feeling silly and small, and Leia turns to leave.

Finally alone, she allows herself to think about that morning. Specifically, Ben’s hot mouth on her skin, and the spine-melting, unbelievable things he had said to her. 

Everything between them has shifted in her mind since then: before he had been a doctor, untouchable and surely uninterested in a nineteen-year-old girl in any way beyond charity. But now that assertion seemed to have been proven concretely false. Embarrassed as she was by her behavior, it made it better than he had participated as well, just as enthusiastically. It made her embarrassment the good, thrilling kind.

A shiver dances down Rey’s spine; he’d be back soon.

~*~

Impossibly, Rey drifts to sleep again. She wakes to the muffled sounds of low voices speaking beyond her bedroom door some time later.

Her heart jerks at the sound of Ben’s distinct, deep rumble somewhere in the house. Even tucked away in her room, she can’t help but blush; she’d gotten on her _knees_ in front of him. He’d kissed and licked at her scent glands. He told her that her nest was _beautiful._

She turns over in bed, burying her head into the pillows with a flustered squeak. They still smell like their combined scents. It makes her dangerously dizzy and hot, so she quickly pulls away and sits up. 

Her gaze drifts to the IV stand next to her bed and she frowns. Where did that even come from? Does Ben just have medical equipment lying around his house?

She reaches up to gently lift the bag of clear fluid she’s connected to off its hook. Slowly, she places her bare feet onto the wood floor and stands. She creeps over to the door, wincing when it opens with a low creak.

Leia and Ben keep talking, unaware. Rey carefully moves toward the living room, stopping behind the wall at the mouth of the hallway. She can just make out their conversation in the kitchen.

“—needs to see a specialist, Ben.”

“You think I don’t know that? She won’t go. Why else would I keep a kid in my house?”

Rey’s heart drops at his use of the word “kid.”

“I wondered about that. Very charitable of you, and very out of character. You’re sure that’s the only reason you brought her here?”

“Of course,” Ben hisses. “Why else would I get you involved? This can’t go on. You’ve got to take her.”

Rey freezes, mouth gone dry. What?

 _“Ben.”_ Leia sounds exasperated. “I don’t see you in almost a year, and when I do it’s to pass a young girl off on me? No. I’m sorry, but this is crazy.”

“Please,” Ben cuts in, uncharacteristically pleading. “It’s not—safe, like this. I can’t be around her.”

Leia is quiet for a moment. “So taking her in really wasn’t just out of the goodness of your heart.” When Ben doesn’t answer, she sighs. “Well, I thought as much.”

“It’s best,” Ben starts, voice strained, “that I get away from her. I don’t trust myself.”

“And you trust me?”

Ben doesn’t answer directly. “You’re mated. You’re a doctor. You won’t charge her for being in your house.”

“But I don’t know if I can help her the way she needs, Ben. She needs to see a specialist, and if she won’t go to a hospital, you know there’s only one person we can ask—”

 _“No,”_ he cuts in viscously. “Absolutely not. I’ll pay for her to see a specialist myself before I let her see _him.”_

Leia huffs. “Well, if she’s coming to my house, I get to decide who she sees and who she doesn’t, don’t I?”

Rey takes this opportunity to step out from the hallway, striding into the kitchen. Both Leia and Ben’s mouths snap shut at the sight of her.

“I’m going to her house?” She tries to make her voice hard, but the words comes out like they were punched from her gut.

Ben eyes widen incrementally before his face shutters closed. He takes a small step back from her, bumping into the sink. “Rey. You shouldn’t be up. Go back to bed.”

Anger flashes through her, sharp and sudden as a blade. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she grits out. “That's all you do and you haven’t got the right.”

His jaw jumps, tightening, and Leia smoothly steps in. “Rey, we just want what’s best for you, dear,” she says gently. “And I don’t think that you can get that here.”

“Why not?” She sounds petulant even to her own ears and she hates it. This isn’t her.

“You know why,” Ben cuts in sharply.

Anger and embarrassment twist through her in tandem. She doesn’t want to talk about this in front of his mother. Through her teeth, she asks, “Can we talk about this alone?”

“No.” He shakes his head firmly, pressing his back into the edge of the sink. “That’s not a good idea.”

Even as he says this, Rey catches a flash of uncertainty in his eyes. She presses the advantage. “This morning was a fluke,” she tells him, nearing desperate. She can't explain it, but the idea of being away from him is just short of unbearable, a physical ache on her back and in her chest. “I don’t know what came over me, but I feel better now. It won’t happen again.”

“We can’t know that,” replies Ben. His tone brooks no argument. “It’s not safe. Not until we figure out what’s going on with you.”

She curls her hands into fists, nails biting into her palms. She will _not_ cry over him again. Why does she want to stay here so bad, anyway? She doesn’t even _know_ him.

 _“Fine,”_ she bites out, anger returning in a formidable wave. She almost feels lightheaded from the intensity of her mood swings. “I’ll go pack my shit then, and you never have to see me again.”

“Rey,” Leia calls after her worriedly, but she’s already out of the room.

Ben, for his part, doesn’t say anything at all.

~*~

Leia takes the IV out of her. She already feels ten times better than she did this morning, pumped with fluids and full of medicine and rest. Her mating gland still aches, but it’s getting easier to ignore — mostly, Rey notes despondently, because Ben keeps a ten feet radius between them at all times.

She packs her things quietly. Once her anger subsides, she feels nothing but the bitter sting of rejection — and under that, suffocating disappointment. She feels younger than her age. She’s embarrassed by how she acted in the kitchen, and for believing that Ben could have possibly wanted anything to do with her. She should know by now that that’s not something that happens to her. It never has been. And besides that, she doesn’t know why she even cares — he’s a stranger.

But for a moment, he had seemed like a stranger who cared. Who _wanted_ her, and it had been intoxicating. And now he’s getting away from her like everyone else in her life before.

A part of Rey is inclined to ignore Leia’s generosity and go off on her own. But where would she go? She doesn’t have an apartment. She could try a homeless shelter, but in her current state, the thought makes her shiver with anxiety — too many opportunities for danger. Too many Alphas with nothing to lose.

“Ready,” she mumbles, once she emerges into the living room with her duffle bag, now full. 

Leia and Ben are there beside front door. Upon seeing her, Ben takes a not-so-subtle step back. Leia offers her a kind smile. “I’m just going to go warm the car up.”

“Mom—” Ben protests, looking momentarily panicked.

She casts him a sharp look. “I’ll let you two say goodbye.” With that, she promptly exits through the front door.

Rey stares at the ground, heart pounding. She can smell him from here, somehow both comforting and devasting at once.

“It’s for the best,” Ben finally says, stilted. “You know that.”

She nods slowly. “Sure.”

He makes a noise of frustration, moving a step closer. Rey snaps her head up, eye wide, and finds him cupping a hand over her mouth, the other curled tightly at his side.

“I’m just—I’m trying to do the right thing.”

Something inside of her softens. She hadn’t realized before how tired he looks. Purple bags lie beneath each of his eyes and his hair is hopelessly mussed. Her shoulders relax and she nods at him, resisting the urge to walk over and smooth it down for him.

“I know,” she tells him softly. “I’m sorry for how I acted earlier. You’ve done so much for me. I should be saying thank you.”

Ben shakes his head. “I put you in a dangerous situation.”

She blushes, knowing she had been the cause for said danger. “It’s not your fault. How could you have known I would act that way?”

“It wasn’t just you.”

Her breath stops short in her lungs. “What?”

Ben slides his hand off of his face, releasing a drawn-out breath. “It wasn’t just your fault.”

The room suddenly feels too small, devoid of enough air. Rey swallows hard; his words have soothed some of the sting of his earlier rejection and now she’s desperate to be near him again.

But she can’t. He’s still sending her away, just like everyone else.

“I should go,” she breathes, though she makes no move toward the front door.

Ben’s eyes flash up to hers, dark in the lowlight of the foyer, and he clears his throat. “Right.”

Keeping a good chunk of space between them, he moves to open the front door. She stands rooted in her place, watching him. Committing his face to memory. Ben stills when he notices, his own eyes roving over the planes of her face.

“You look a lot better,” he murmurs.

Rey takes a small step toward him, nodding. He doesn’t seem to mind. “I feel a lot better. I think the pneumonia’s clearing up, at least.”

“Good,” he rumbles. She feels it in her gut.

She bites down on her lip, noting with a thrill the way his eyes immediately flicker down to catch the movement. It fuels her with just enough confidence to ask, against her better judgement, “Will I see you again?”

He exhales lowly through his mouth. That mouth had been on her, just hours earlier. “It’s not a good idea.”

“But will I?”

Ben lets the silence stretch between them for a long moment. She holds her breath, her body like a live wire beneath the intensity of his gaze. Curled around the edge of the front door, his knuckles are stark white.

“I don’t know," he finally answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sure, ben.
> 
> it took FOREVER to figure this chapter out. sorry it wasn't super spicy, gotta throw some plot and angst in there somewhere. next chapter should explain what's actually going on with rey. in the meantime, how long do we think ben will hold off before he shows up at leia's? a few hours? bless him for trying to do the Right Thing
> 
> (if ben's characterization seems different in rey's POV than in his own, that's on purpose. she sees him much differently than he sees himself.)
> 
> btw: i have another story i usually write between these updates that you can find [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25620742/chapters/62190775) it's alpha rey/omega ben, so if that interests you check it out!!


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